I guess they thought it was good brand building and wanted to continue the Westinghouse tradition...

After Siemens AG purchased Westinghouse Electric Corporation's power generation unit in 1997, it was under the impression that the prestigious Westinghouse Science Talent Search (now the Intel Science Talent Search) would be theirs as well. When they discovered this was not the case and they ultimately lost the bidding to Intel, Siemens decided to create the Siemens Foundation to continue the tradition using the well-known Westinghouse name, calling the new competition the Siemens Westinghouse Competition (SWC) and, later, the Siemens Competition.

I am generally interested in understanding the structure, mechanism of action, and enzymology (inhibition) of proteins that lead to infectious disease, inflammation, and cancer. My research projects are multidisciplinary and include structural biology, enzymology, structural genomics, bioinformatics, mutational analysis, high throughput screening, inhibitor design, and structure-activity relationship investigation. Exploring the mechanism of enzyme catalysis to answer those fundamental questions in our textbook is another field of my research. In particular of interest, I have worked on the mechanisms involved in carbon bond cleavage and formation going through Schiff base intermediate, which may provides some novel strategies in protein conjugation for drug development.

Now it would be a coincidence if this is not in the same family .And if it is a relative then it does sound as though the dad should get the prize for the original work.

Posted by Joy
a resident of Gunn High School
on Apr 9, 2013 at 6:00 pm

I would like to thank everyone for their congratulations and interest in our project. At the time, I was excited to realize that my partner and I were recognized for our work in this field.

I am here in hopes of clarifying the speculation surrounding a certain Dr. Jin and/or Dr. Luh's involvement in conducting part of our project. My father's name, Michael Jin, is not included in any of the names mentioned above; he is an electrical engineer. If there is need for a reference, his LinkedIn profile can be found here: Web Link.

In further regards to the comments from above, I would like to mention the following:

The phrase "How about the kids who had to do it themselves? Thats not fair" implies, whether intentionally or not, that my work with my partner was either plagiarized or stolen. However, we both sacrificed countless days and weeks over the past year conducting experiments, analyzing data, and designing and presenting our findings.

As I am sure many here are familiar with, this comes from students who are involved in extracurriculars and at the same time trying to juggle schoolwork, SATs, and a social life at the same time. I argue back that it is "not fair" to assume that chance relationships between professors with the same surname as my partner's and my own are automatically linked to us--thousands, if not millions, of individuals exist with identical names.

Though my family has been hugely supportive towards me, they have strictly believed in teaching me to take responsibility for my own labor and actions. I am rather indignant at the implications of some comments, which belittle the work Thomas and I have put into this project out of our own interests in the medical field.

It is my sincere wish that this miscommunication may be resolved now. Thank you.